Epstein Files Reveal Key Role He Gave to Harvard’s Slutty Professor
Newly released wills show disgraced economist Larry Summers and Barclays boss Jes Staley were lined up to help steer the pedophile’s fortune.

Rick Friedman / Alamy
Jeffrey Epstein lined up disgraced Harvard economist Larry Summers to help run his estate, newly released Justice Department documents show.
The latest cache, part of an 11,034-document dump under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, shows former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley, 68, was named in 2012 as “successor executor” of Epstein’s will—a back-up figure to take control if the main executors could not serve, according to the Financial Times.
The outlet reports that Staley reappears in wills from 2013 and 2014, with the 2014 document also adding former Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Summers, 71, as another successor executor.
Epstein’s final 2019 will—signed shortly before he died in a New York jail—no longer lists either man, the FT says. Under the documents, executors and trustees were separate roles, but they suggest Epstein wanted Staley and then Summers in reserve to help direct his wealth if first-choice figures fell away.
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That sits uneasily with Staley’s effort to distance himself from Epstein.

Jes Staley, the former CEO of British multinational bank Barclays PLC.
Carl Court/Getty Images
At a London tribunal in March, Staley told the court he had rebuffed a request to serve as a trustee of the estate and argued that refusal showed they were not close friends, according to the FT.
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Regulators did not buy his attempts to downplay the relationship. Earlier this year, Staley lost his appeal against a lifetime ban from senior U.K. financial roles after the Financial Conduct Authority found he “acted without integrity” by approving a 2019 Barclays letter claiming he “did not have a close relationship” with Epstein.
Summers has also faced the fallout over his ties to the financier.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers was nicknamed the ‘slutty professor’ after enlisting Epstein as his woman-chasing 'wingman.'
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Emails released by a congressional committee showed him in regular contact with Epstein through 2019—the same year Epstein died while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges—trading notes on donations, introductions, and personal matters, including women.
After those disclosures, Summers said he was “deeply ashamed” and stepped back from roles at OpenAI, think tanks, and his teaching duties at Harvard, where he has been tenured since 1983.
But that was not before students secretly recorded him discussing the scandal and pushed for accountability, even as the university moved to investigate the students who first reported on the connection between the two.
A spokesperson for Summers told the Daily Beast: “Mr. Summers had absolutely no knowledge that he was included in an early version of Epstein’s will and had no involvement in his financial matters or the administration of his estate.”
The Beast has also attempted to contact Staley, but has not received a response at the time of publication.
The latest revelations show Epstein was not just emailing and dining with some of the most powerful figures in finance and economics—he was quietly lining them up to help oversee his fortune after he was gone.

Jeffrey Epstein had many friends in high places.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
They are also part of a broader storm over how the Justice Department has handled the legally mandated dumps of Epstein material.
In one batch, DOJ briefly posted records showing Donald Trump’s previously unknown flights on Epstein’s jet—including a trip with Epstein and a 20-year-old woman—before taking the files offline and later restoring them.

A picture of Trump and Epstein was in Epstein's desk drawer and scrubbed from the DOJ's Epstein files dump.
X / House Oversight Democrats
In another, an image of a framed photo of Trump and Epstein in a desk drawer appeared to disappear from the online “Epstein Library” before reappearing days later.
Victims and lawmakers have also blasted the department for heavy redactions and apparent gaps. In a statement, 19 victims accused the DOJ of flouting the transparency law by withholding material and clumsily handling survivors’ identities.
Trump, 79, has fumed that the releases are “terrible” for powerful figures whose names and images appear in the trove, even as he boasts that he once threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago.
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